Butterflies in November

NINE

I follow him into the bedroom with the two-timing watch on my wrist for one final exchange of bodily fluids.

It’s a double bed, the bed of a woman and man who were close, of a woman who has kissed his tummy and a man who has tightly wrapped himself around her and kissed her breasts and more besides. Here, as I blow fluff off his navel, I peruse the familiar territory one last time.

I wouldn’t call it a guilty conscience, but I can’t deny that Nína Lind has briefly entered my mind. Even though this could be looked upon as a repeat performance or an action replay, my husband is nevertheless being unfaithful to the future mother of his child and I am his new mistress.

Afterwards we spend some time chatting about our childhood scratches and mutual scars, but despite our four years and 288 days of marriage, I had never noticed that scar under his shoulder blade.

No matter how often or cunningly I try to put the question to him, he won’t give anything away about what might have happened to him, other than:

“Doesn’t matter now, good night.”

“Good night.”

He turns over on his side. I wonder if there is some way of prolonging the moment, of finding something that will grab his attention.

“Good night.”

“Yes, you’ve already said good night.”

“Yeah, I just wanted to say it again, I wasn’t sure if you’d heard me.”

“Yes, I heard you, I said good night too.”

“Good night.”

He is half buried under the quilt, his head under the pillow, one of his legs protruding over the end of the bed, hairy all over, except for the soles of his feet. His clothes are in a pile on the floor. His mom has started to do his laundry; I notice the pleat of the iron on his underpants. He obviously isn’t troubled by his conscience, this man lying beside me with his hairy arm draped over my stomach. Once he has drifted into sleep, I move his arm to be able to readjust my viewing position: now that we’re divorcing it’s about time I got to know my husband. I watch the way his expression dissolves and his facial features revert to their original formless state, his mouth half gaping. I scrutinize the remaining traces of the little boy in him, which are in themselves more than sufficient to satisfy any need I might have for a child. I watch his hairy chest, who knows if it is the heart of a child beating underneath it? Seems such a short while since those first sounds were stuttered, before he could master words and use them to his advantage. A little pout suddenly forms on his mouth and I sense he may be having a bad dream, although his deep breathing betrays no emotion. I try to remember what we might have done over the course of the past five years, but am unable to fill in all the little time lapses. Vague as the recollections may be, I can categorically say that he never vacuum-cleaned. And neither did I, because we don’t have any carpets, most of the memories end in the bed. A relationship to me is all about the right body and the right smell, the home is a shell for the body, not a place for exchanging existential views and having discussions. Even though you still have to load the washing machine and cook for the body.

But I do have a flashback of him solicitously carrying me some tea, taking slow, cautious steps out of the kitchen with a bright yellow liquid in a rattling porcelain cup, his big body looming over the delicate vessel with its pattern of blue flowers, flexing his knees and hunching his shoulders, as he carefully places one foot in front of the other, as if he were carrying the egg of life in his hands, as if he were holding the slippery body of a newborn child, his entire being focused on the task at hand. Apart from that, it’s mostly mornings I recall; we’re saying goodbye to each other, then a short moment later we’re saying goodnight to each other; there are vast gaps in between, I could perhaps resuscitate some extra quarters of an hour here and there, but other than that can remember nothing else. If I were forced to, if I were to be locked up between the walls of an old classroom and compelled to produce an account of our four years and 288 days of cohabitation, I could maybe dig up enough events and words to fill a blackboard totalling thirty days. How many pages would that be in a double-spaced manuscript? The same words frequently recur over and over again. You can’t really say that conjugal life does much to advance the evolution of language.

I gently lift the quilt, as if uncovering a newborn child in a cradle to peep at its curled-up body and baby crochet socks. I place the palm of my hand flatly on his warm stomach. He heaves a faint sigh and turns over on his back, and then on his stomach again, exhaling heavily and producing a deep, faint sound, like the foghorn of a ship as it pulls out of harbour to sail off to another land.

And now I commit him all to memory, since he is about to leave. I scan his throat, shoulder blades, back, ribs, buttocks, thighs, the crease of his knees, calves and the soles of his feet, all unbeknown to him, without waking him, secretly shifting my gaze from place to place, studying his body like a relief map, exploring him, surveying him from vertebra to vertebra, recording everything I see, capturing him in the minutest detail, storing every single hair of his body so that I will be able to conjure them up at will again, until the day comes when I lose the longing to do so and no longer remember the feel of his skin, because he has been replaced by another body perhaps.

A new sound has penetrated the bedroom, at first almost imperceptibly, then growing and switching tone until it turns into a distinctly intrusive buzz. There can no longer be any doubt: at least two bluebottles are hovering in the vicinity of the bed. At that same moment, I spot one of the flies landing on my husband’s face, plunging its legs into the lake of his chin and strolling around the undergrowth of his stubble. I wave it away, but it lands again on his forehead, cheek, nose, chin; I blow on it and try to dust it off his face without waking him. Then I stretch out to grab the poetry book on the bedside table: The Head of a Woman. I use it as a fan to banish the fly, ever so delicately, like a diva who has grown weary of a suitor in an operetta. The fly then doubles its efforts, so I roll up the book and strike it on my husband’s upper lip, squashing it in a single blow and turning it into a shapeless black blotch just under his nose. Thorsteinn wakes with a start, springs up and grabs his head the way air passengers are instructed to do when bracing themselves for a crash landing.

“You hit me?”

“Sorry, there was a fly on your upper lip so I killed it.”

“A fly, at the end of October?”

He looks at me incredulously, with a wavering and unfathomable expression, but still relaxed and soft, his facial features still unformed, a little boy with no pyjamas and a hairy chest. He is already getting over it, lies down and quickly drifts into sleep again. Then I carefully lie over his warm body, flat out, stretching all over him, trying to cover him in his entirety as he lies there; but no matter how hard I try, parts of him seem to protrude from everywhere. He doesn’t stir, but breathes deeply and regularly. Then a part of him suddenly wakes up, I feel a movement against my tummy, his breathing halts a moment and I hold my breath with him. Nothing happens until he locks his arms around me.

Once he has fallen asleep again, I audaciously set the time on the second dial — the free one that can be set according to my own conscience. It has got to be said to my conscience’s credit, though, that on this October night it is proving to be more steadfast than my heart, which is why I set the same time on both dials and they both read seventeen minutes past three, as I lay down in the hollow of my husband’s elbow, nestling into him as if nothing had happened, with one arm over his chest, which heaves and sinks, causing the alarm clock on the bedside table to flash in and out of view. Then, as usual, I tire of the twisted position of my shoulder and slip my arm away as I turn from him and he follows my movement with a heavy arm.

All things considered, you can’t really say that he ever treated me badly.